Jean-Baptiste-Claude Delisle de Sales

Jean-Baptiste-Claude Delisle de Sales or Jean-Baptiste Isoard de Lisle (29 April 1741 – 22 September 1816) was a French philosopher noted for his multi-edition, multi-volume opus The Philosophy of Nature: Treatise on Human Moral Nature.

[1] De Sales taught for the Oratorians in Riom and Nantes until 1768, when he resigned to become an independent philosopher in Paris.

[2] His book The Philosophy of Nature was first published in 1770 and expanded over the years, supposedly going through seven editions and increasing in size to up to a dozen volumes.

Voltaire championed his defense, but de Sales was imprisoned in March 1777 for publishing a book deemed to be anti-royalist, an event that brought his works out of obscurity.

However, by 1794, feeling the Revolution had discarded its underlying principles, he returned to royalist sympathies, and was arrested for publishing anti-Jacobin works.